Opinion
Editorial

Matichuk for change - Sudbury Star editorial

We had hoped for more out of Ted Callaghan. The 16-year council veteran, with eight years of experience as budget chair, has emerged as the quiet leader on council and the only real challenger to Mayor John Rodriguez around the table. In the fall of 2008, he showed his potential in a savvy address to council arguing against the sports complex and the performing arts centre -- the so-called legacy projects -- which lost by one vote.

But we have not seen that Callaghan this fall.

In his campaign and in interviews with The Star, he has demonstrated a solid grasp of street-level civic issues, yet he is dropping in the polls. If he cannot capture voters' imaginations now, how is he going to lead the city and win over politicians in Queen's Park and Ottawa during what is sure to be difficult times of budget restraint. He argued he is the best one to tackle the coming four years of financial "misery" at the council table, but misery is a hard message to embrace.

Callaghan's absence as budget chair would be a huge loss to the next council.

John Rodriguez, the incumbent mayor, has led a term of expectation and frustration, though in some areas, he has delivered. His charisma and determination are winning traits that sent him to Ottawa for 18 years as a New Democrat MP and enabled him to defeat incumbent mayor Dave Courtemanche in the 2006 election. He may well win this election, too. Many of his supporters remain loyal.

His vision -- and he has a strong one -- is to develop the downtown core and extend its economic tentacles throughout the region. He wants the city to invest deeply in infrastructure and reap the economic rewards he believes will come. Indeed, after he lost the vote on the legacy projects, he turned his attention to other things: advocating for a school of architecture downtown, developing and repairing sports facilities and pushing the 128-bed long-term-care facility to Chelmsford. He takes credit for fixing more roads, but the last two years of massive roadwork were made possible through government funding from higher levels.

Rodriguez is a highly engaging man. His optimism is enticing and his resolve is admirable. But there are troubling blights on his municipal record. He professes transparency, but refuses to acknowledge to this day that public disclosure should have prevailed in 2008 when councillors were allowed to purchase tickets to the Elton John concert ahead of the public. The immense backlash haunts council to this day. He was dismissive then, and is dismissive now, of the public's right to information, admitting only that allowing the purchase was a mistake.

For a man with so much political experience, he outright blew the politics of the legacy projects by failing to engage citizens and by losing the support of the one man who could have given it a major boost -- Sudbury MPP Rick Bartolucci. That was a profound political miscalculation.

And he showed his lack of interest in genuine transparency and inclusiveness as recently as this spring when he did not allow council to consider any action on a quest to purchase the former St. Joseph's Hospital site, claiming it happened too quickly. In-camera council meetings can happen quickly, too, but he simply dismisses the possibility.

The mayor said, upon being elected, that he was driving the bus, but on some key issues the doors remained closed and we see no reason to believe he will change.

Greater Sudbury would benefit from new blood.

And so we come to Marianne Matichuk.

She is confident and charismatic. To some, she is a refreshing dynamo who has shaken up the old-boys club. To others, she's the Tasmanian devil whose whirlwind is destructive.

She ran an intensely negative campaign, with her persistent exaggerations of Rodriguez's failings.

But she has captured the attention of many voters -- the "angry" vote -- closing the gap with Rodriguez to within a few percentage points as the election approaches.

She offers the best potential to help break the city out of its entrenched chariness.

Her outlook offers a more tangible business-friendly environment. She wants to encourage the business community to take the initiative. When Rodriguez sided with the United Steelworkers during the year-long strike at Vale, it was politically wise, but it offered too much same-old, same-old. If other unionized businesses face a strike, can they depend on their mayor not to take sides against them? Matichuk says she would have remained neutral.

Her platform is curiously simplistic, at first glance, too much so. She wants to reorganize city hall, limit tax increases as a priority -- not just as a political convenience -- and she wants to probe city spending for waste.

Early in her campaign, Matichuk's platform appeared thin, even trite, but in debates and interviews it became evident there is more substance to her than the public might see. It comes from what she calls her "operational experience." As a former health-and-safety manager for the city and now for Vale, she is familiar with the city's numerous worksites and processes, and with the challenges faced by front-line workers. She has seen how things are done at street level.

Still, her lack of political experience is disconcerting. She knows better than to place concrete numbers on tax increases, but her avowal of a "line-by-line" budget review remains a vague promise.

To vote for Matichuk, one must accept there are unknowns to her leadership potential, but also that the city needs to break dramatically from its political past.